


This is Yours

by roquentine



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Discussions of Feelings, Established Relationship, Groveling, It's John who fucks up this time, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 10:23:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9176812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roquentine/pseuds/roquentine
Summary: John goes on an accidental bender and doesn't check in, so Sherlock kicks him back upstairs.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like I was always reading (and writing) fics where Sherlock had done something wrong and had to apologize for it or somehow make it up to John, but John never did anything wrong ever. So here's a fic where John's the one who does something dumb, really, really dumb, and has to seek forgiveness.

_Sunday_

John had fucked up.

No, like, _seriously_ fucked up.

That much he could tell from the expression on Lestrade’s face.

What he could also tell was that it was daylight outside, which was very bad, and he was still a little bit drunk, which was very, very bad.

What he couldn’t tell, not immediately, were a number of other things. Like where he was, or what time it actually was, or how, exactly, he had ended up on the floor of this unknown flat at this unknown hour.

“Let’s go,” Lestrade said, his expression softening a bit as he reached down.

John shifted up to his knees, then took Lestrade’s hand and lurched to his feet, slightly embarrassed at how much of the heavy lifting Lestrade had to do to get him there. When he raised his head, his vision swam for a second, until something in the distance, in the hallway behind Lestrade, began to come into focus. The back of a coat, a dark head of hair, moving away from where he was standing. Or swaying, more accurately.

“Sherlock,” he called, but it came out a whisper, besides which he only got as far as “Sherlo…” before the rest was lost to a dry heave.

* * * * *

“Where are we?” John finally asked, his voice still dry and cracking. He was curled on his side in the backseat of Lestrade’s car, his arms wrapped around his middle, his eyes squeezed shut against the bright and evil sunlight that seemed to be pouring in from every direction.

“About three blocks from your clinic,” Lestrade answered. John felt something hitting his knee, and cracked one eye open as little as he could, until he could see that Lestrade was smacking him with a bottle of water, and reached for it.

“What the _fuck_ did I do?” he rasped as Lestrade started the car. He swore he felt the lining of his esophagus absorb the first sip of water before it ever reached his stomach.

“Apparently, you got monumentally drunk with some of your new coworkers, and crashed on one of their floors. Christ, John, you couldn’t even make it to the couch?"

Bits and pieces of the previous evening began to poke through the black fog still surrounding John’s short-term memory. A frustrating day at the clinic, an invite for pints from Jeff and Lenore, and some other people, and then there were mixed drinks, some of them blue. And then there were shot glasses, and then someone lived next door? And there were possibly more shots? His memory trailed off as his stomach lurched.

“But you didn’t just pass out on what must have been a very uncomfortable hardwood floor,” Lestrade said quietly, turning a corner more slowly than he usually did, not so much caring about what the turn might do to John but what John might do to his upholstery.

“Shit, what else?” John moaned.

“You never called home.”

The full implication of what that meant slammed into him. _Shit._

“John, you scared him to death. You scared _all_ of us to death. Sherlock had no idea where you were. When he couldn’t reach you by midnight, he tried Stamford to see if you were out together, which you weren’t, given that Stamford is on holiday in Ibiza. At 3AM he actually called Mycroft. That’s how panicked he was. We’ve been looking for you ever since. For fuck’s sake, John, we thought you’d been taken again.”

John cringed. God, how he had fucked up. “How did you find me?”

“By banging on the door of the clinic secretary at five o’clock in the morning, making her come down and open the clinic, rifling through personnel records and staffing schedules, and calling every person you worked with last night. Whoever didn’t answer, we banged on _their_ door.”

John scrubbed a hand over his face as the knot in his already sickened stomach grew tighter. “My phone…” he mumbled. “Why didn’t he just track…”

“It pinged as being at the clinic.” Lestrade reached to the seat beside him, then passed John’s phone back to him. “We found it in your lab coat.”

 _Oh, God_. More flashes of memory settled into place as he took the phone. He had realized he left it behind halfway through his first pint. _I’ll just finish this, then go back for it,_ except the second appeared before the first was polished off, and then the first startlingly blue drink appeared.

What the fuck had he done?

He clicked the phone on, saw 12 missed calls, and closed his eyes as his heart sank.

* * * * *

“Help me upstairs?” John muttered as the car pulled to the kerb.

Lestrade scoffed. “No way am I witnessing what’s about to happen. I’ll come back tonight and see if I need to arrest Sherlock for homicide, justifiable though it may be.”

“Oh, fuck.” John sat up and steadied himself, then shoved the car door open. He shifted gingerly to the pavement and looked back at Lestrade, shading his eyes with his hand. “Thanks,” he said, and meant it. “I’m… so sorry.” He meant that too.

“Good luck, mate,” Lestrade said, quite seriously, then pulled the car into the street.

John looked up at the front door of 221B, took a deep breath, and pushed it open.

* * * * *

He took his time trudging up the stairs, dreading what was about to happen, mostly because he had no idea what was about to happen.

John just… didn’t do things like this. He didn’t get stupid drunk and pass out on someone’s floor, and he certainly didn’t do it without checking in with Sherlock. He still had no idea how last night got away from him to such a calamitous extent.

He did know that whatever was about to happen to him, he would deserve every minute of, and he vowed to stand there and take it until there was nothing left to take.

And then, if he was being honest, he would probably have to pass out and sleep for another few hours, or possibly days.

When he finally reached the landing, he found the door already open. Sherlock was sitting on the couch, one long leg crossed over the other, still wrapped in his coat, his hands pushed into the pockets, staring straight across the room.

“Sherlock…”

“Don’t,” came the quick, clipped reply.

John sighed, and hung his head. “I honestly don’t know what to say…”

“Then don’t,” Sherlock said again, still sharp, still staring.

Not only did John not know what to say, but now he didn’t know what to do. Should he just stand here until Sherlock moved? He could feel the gravity of sleep pulling at him, so as a course of action, just standing here wouldn’t last long. He opened his mouth to try one more time, then closed it, then realized how thirsty he still was, and now that he thought about it, he could use a piss, and the silence just got more and more awkward. When he finally spoke again, it was tentative, halting, as he expected to be cut off at every syllable.

“I’m just… gonna… sleep... then…” John stuttered, and started to move into the hallway.

“Upstairs,” Sherlock said.

John stopped, and squinted. “Huh?” was all he could manage.

“You will sleep upstairs.”

John blinked, distracted for a second by how dry his eyes were, while his brain, in the background, processed what Sherlock had said.

 _Oh._ “Oh,” John said dismally. “Right. Yeah.”

It was probably for the best in the short term; he wouldn’t want to sleep next to him either right now. He turned and trudged up one more flight of stairs, stopped in the toilet to drain the remainder of last night’s mistakes and splash water on his face, then fell facedown on the bed, and slept.

* * * * *

He woke up totally disorientated. He wasn’t in his room, except he was, in his old room, but not the room he slept in now, except he was sleeping in it now. It wasn’t dark when he went to sleep and now it was, but it somehow didn’t feel like the middle of the night, though he didn’t know why. He dragged his arm out from under the pillow and opened his eyes just enough to focus on his watch: a little after 9PM.

He collapsed back into the pillow, right on his face, and thought about the state of his affairs. He was as thirsty as he could ever remember being. He was both starving and simultaneously sickened by the idea of eating anything. His head felt like someone had cleaved an ax into his skull.

And Sherlock, at the moment, couldn’t stand the sight of him.

John turned his head to the side when breathing finally became difficult and tried to figure out how he was possibly going to solve any of these problems, ever. His eye sockets felt like they were filled with sand, but he blinked and blinked and willed himself to keep them open. When he did, he saw a glass of water and a bottle of paracetamol on the bedside table.

He felt bile rise in the back of his throat, and it wasn’t just the hangover. Somehow the fact that Sherlock, in his completely justified anger, still came up and did something kind for him only made it all worse.

He lurched up and reached for the bottle to find that Sherlock had even pried the lid loose for him. He shook two pills, maybe three, he couldn’t really see that well, into his hand, threw them in his mouth, and downed the contents of the glass in one long pull.

Then, with a courage he didn’t really feel, he pulled himself out of bed and went downstairs.

* * * * *

Sherlock was folded in his chair, staring blankly at a black and white movie on the telly. John, carrying the empty glass, moved into the kitchen, refilled it, drained it again while standing at the sink, then filled it one more time before moving back into the sitting room and settling gingerly onto the couch. He sipped at the water and watched Sherlock, waiting for some reaction, then sighed when he accepted that they would very likely sit here all night and maybe forever if he waited for Sherlock to speak first.

He decided to start with a simple, “Look, I’m really sorry.”

Sherlock didn’t move.

John breathed in and continued. “I wish I could tell you that I knew why it happened, but I don’t, I honestly don’t. There’s absolutely no reason. All I can tell you is that I never intended to get that pissed or stay out all night and not tell you. It was a long day yesterday, I didn’t have time for lunch, so things got very fuzzy very quickly once the beer started flowing, and I knew I had left my phone at the office and I kept intending to go back and get it, but I just didn’t, and…”

He trailed off, knowing how awful it sounded, and how little he was offering by way of an actual apology. Sherlock still hadn’t moved his eyes off the television.

Every moment of silence was a dagger in John’s chest, but he knew he deserved it. How could he be so stupid, so insensitive, given the lives they led? There were criminals, actual dangerous criminals, who not only knew who they were and knew where they lived, but now, because of the delightfully thorough tabloid press, also knew what they were to each other. _Of course_ Sherlock would assume the worst when he didn’t come home.

“I guess all I can do is promise that it will never happen again, and that I will do everything I can to make it up to you. I don’t know how, but I will.”

Still nothing.

John sighed and stood up. He realized he was probably going to be sleeping upstairs for longer than just tonight, so he went into the bathroom to collect his toothbrush. Just as he was exiting the kitchen door to the hallway, Sherlock spoke.

“A heart.”

John paused and looked back at him. “Sorry?”

“A heart. Bring me a heart. A human one.”

John just stared.

“For an experiment.”

John’s eyebrows knotted together.

Sherlock finally looked up and stared back at John’s expression of confusion. “You just said you wanted to make it up to me. Bring me a heart.”

John shook his head for a moment, and decided to press his luck. “If I bring you a heart, can I come back to bed?”

Sherlock’s eyes returned to the television. “We’ll see.”

* * * * *

Upstairs, John stripped to his pants and climbed properly into the bed, then clicked open the SMS function on his phone and texted Molly.

**_So, I need a heart._ **

_Um, is this a metaphor?_

**_Sadly, no. I need a human heart. Any John or Jane Does headed for the incinerator soon?_ **

_I can have one for you on Friday. Or rather, for him, I’m guessing?_

**_Yeah, it’s for him. I have to make something up to him, and of course THIS is what he asked for. I’d put an eyeroll emoji in here if I knew how. Thanks for your help._ **

_Anytime._

* * * * *

_Monday_

John almost called his office and told them he wouldn’t be in, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit to his generally younger colleagues that he didn’t recover just as quickly as they did. He managed to sleep through the rest of the night and get some toast and tea to stay down in the morning. Sherlock was either still in bed or gone, John didn’t know which and didn’t feel up to finding out. Instead he made his way to the clinic and laughed off the disaster of Saturday night, popping paracetamol whenever the urge struck him.

Toward the end of the day, he was by himself in the back, disposing of blood draws in the medical waste containers. He picked up the last vial and considered it. It was from a patient who was diagnosed with an extremely rare blood disorder earlier in the week, and they had held the sample back to retest it before referring the woman to a specialist. John poured the contents into a fresh vial, capped it, and tucked it in his pocket while trying not to think about how many ethical guidelines and/or actual laws he had just broken as he headed home.

He found Sherlock peering into the microscope at the kitchen table, the first he had seen him all day. He wordlessly held the vial out to him.

“What’s this?”

“It’s blood.”

“Anyone’s in particular?”

“No. A patient’s. Obviously I can’t tell you which patient, and you really actually cannot ever tell anyone that I gave it to you, Sherlock, I mean it. But… I thought you might find it interesting.”

“Why?”

John waved a hand. “Just… experiment, or whatever, see what you can find out.”

Sherlock placed the vial in a tray on the table. “Thank you,” he said, more or less into the microscope.

That was that, then.

* * * * *

_Tuesday_

“What’s this?”

“An envelope.”

“Very funny,” Sherlock rolled his eyes as he held the envelope up to the light and peered at it intently, then ripped off one of the short edges and shook the contents into his palm. They were concert tickets. “Itzhak Perlman?”

“Yeah. He’s playing with the London Symphony Orchestra, one night only, in February. I thought we could go.”

Sherlock’s face broke into a crooked smile as he looked up at John. “This has been sold out for months.”

John shrugged, a small proud smile of his own emerging. “I pulled some strings.”

“You called Anthea.”

“What? No, of course not. I pulled… strings. My own strings. I have strings, you know.”

“Anthea,” Sherlock insisted cheerfully.

“ _Other_ strings,” John growled.

Sherlock turned his hand and held up the tickets, his grin widening. “Mycroft’s name is on them.”

“Dammit,” John sighed. His shoulders slumped toward the ground, and he turned and trudged upstairs without another word.

* * * * *

_Wednesday_

“What’s this?”

“It’s a present, Sherlock, like the blood and the tickets. I’m bringing you presents.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to come back to bed.” John didn’t mean to just blurt this out, but there it was, and he let it hang there as he sat down at the desk.

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at him. “Where’s my heart?”

“Oh, isn’t that an excellent question. Just open it.”

Sherlock ripped the paper off the flimsy cardboard box and lifted the lid, blinking at the contents.

“It’s an old picture.” Sherlock looked up at him, unimpressed.

“Some detective you are. Yes, an old picture. Of what?”

“Of some youth football team, from the 80’s, judging by the hairstyles, and the length of the shorts. See, the uniforms back then…”

“Sherlock. Just look at it. Recognize anyone?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes and looked back down at the photo, then stilled. He touched one face in particular with a fingertip and made a quick inhale. “John…”

John smiled. “I was rummaging in a box in what _used_ to be the room I _used_ to sleep in. That was my ESFA team, the year we won the Under-13’s Schools’ Cup.”

“You were so…” Sherlock’s voice trailed for a long second, then he blinked, and regrouped. “... you know… blonde.”

“Yeah. Puberty is such bullshit. I lost the cute towhead, and the growth spurt was apocryphal.” John laughed at himself, but Sherlock just kept staring at the photo, at John’s smiling, goofy, innocently wide-open twelve-year-old face.

“Anyway,” John said. He watched Sherlock looking at his picture, and he felt such a surge of love and remorse that he almost got dizzy. He rose from his chair. “I’m gonna make some tea. Did you want some?”

“Thank you,” Sherlock said. He finally looked up. Were his eyes slightly wetter than usual? “I mean, yes, to the tea, but thank you for this.”

“You’re welcome,” John said simply. He waited a beat, to see if Sherlock would break and offer him a smile or a kiss or a shag over the desk, but none of those things happened, so he went to fill the kettle.

* * * * *

_Thursday_

If only Molly could have secured the heart by Thursday instead of Friday, this might have been avoided, but no. And it was John who had established this pattern, who had decided that he would offer daily gifts of penance in an attempt to demonstrate the depth of his guilt and remorse. He had no one but himself to blame for that, and for the reason it all had to happen in the first place.

So he climbed the stairs with his absurdly large paper bag containing five boxes of portents of nothing less than weekly doom.

Sherlock was pacing and muttering, lost in an old hardback book, something to do with plumbing systems during the industrial revolution, which he snapped shut decisively when John appeared in the sitting room.

“What’s this?”

“Sherlock, you know you say that every time, right?” Sherlock’s eyes gave away that he _did_ know that, that he was doing it just to annoy John, and that he was satisfied that it had worked. Sherlock dropped smugly into his chair and looked at John expectantly.

John sighed. “Sunday nights, for the next two months, is what this is.” He set the bag down at Sherlock’s feet and perched in his own chair.

Sherlock pulled the boxes from the bag, one by one. “Monopoly?”

“God help me,” John muttered.

“Cribbage. John, we already have Cluedo.”

“We used to have Cluedo, until you cracked the board over your knee.”

“It’s still playable,” Sherlock said under his breath, reaching for the last two games in the bag. “Dominoes. And Operation? We have that one too.”

“No we don’t, Mycroft keeps smuggling his over here. I should warn you, life skills translate. You’ll never beat me at Operation.”

“Sunday nights for the next two months?”

“Yes. I’ll play whatever you want, every Sunday night for the next two months.”

“Three months,” Sherlock countered.

“What?”

“Sunday nights for the next three months.”

John sighed. “Fine. Three months. Can I come back to bed?”

“Do you have my heart?”

“I should have it tomorrow.”

“Then we’ll see.”

* * * * *

_Friday_

“Before you can say ‘What’s this,’” John called from the landing, then entering the flat, “ _here_ is your bloody heart.” He set the blue medical cooler down rather harder than necessary on the desk, then framed it with both hands, a sarcastic presentation, before starting to pull off his coat.

“ _Finally_ ,” Sherlock breathed as he popped up off the sofa and went to inspect it. He flipped the lid open and peered in. “Oh, it’s perfect.”

“Why do you want it, anyway?” John called from the kitchen, pulling open the fridge and rummaging for a beer he knew had to be in there somewhere. God, it had been a long week.

Sherlock brought the cooler over to the kitchen table, next to where John was standing, and put it down in front of them. “Why do I want a heart? You’re a doctor, John. It’s the most fascinating muscle in the human body. Who wouldn’t want one?”

Something in Sherlock’s tone was off, though. John stood there, drinking his beer, looking at Sherlock looking at the heart, and he knew this wasn’t about kitchen table experimentation.

“Sherlock,” he said quietly. “It’s Friday. It’s time. What is this all about?”

Sherlock sighed, then took a deep breath. “You once said you find it difficult, this sort of thing,” he said slowly.

“I remember,” John replied.

“I do, too. Find it… difficult.” Sherlock took another deep breath. “So I thought… a visual aid.” They both stared down at the heart, nestled in its dry ice, nowhere near a healthy red. It was brown and inviable, clinical, utterly lifeless.

John looked up at him, his eyebrows pulling together, not quite there yet.

“I’m sorry. I know this… with me…” - Sherlock waved his hand to indicate the flat, and what their life was now - “I know it isn’t easy. I know I ask a lot of you.”

“No more than I’m willing to give...” John jumped in quickly. Sherlock winced, and John shook his head at his error, his eagerness to show contrition. He needed to be quiet, now, and allow Sherlock to make his way through this.

“I know, for ordinary people, one of them can accidentally stay out all night and no one panics. The other one’s… what, annoyed, or kind of worried, or even a bit angry, but not…” He drifted. Sherlock couldn’t find the words to describe how he felt when he couldn’t find John. _Sherlock_ couldn’t find words. “But we’re not ordinary.”

“No, that we aren’t,” John agreed quietly.

“So, I wanted to show you what my heart would look like if something happened to you.”

John stopped breathing as he tried to swallow around the lump in his throat. He was such an idiot. He had never realized the true depth of Sherlock’s love for him, but now, today, it had just become tangible, in the form of this cadaver heart on their kitchen table. His eyes pricked with tears as he realized how utterly ridiculous this would seem to anyone else, but how perfectly he understood what Sherlock was trying to tell him, how he was the only one who could, and what that meant.

“If your heart ever stops, mine will too. That’s how this works, now. I know it isn’t fair, that’s not a fair thing to ask of anyone, but John…” Sherlock’s voice had started to quaver.

“Sherlock…” John reached for Sherlock’s hand and brought it up to place it flat against his chest. He ran his own hand over Sherlock’s arm, then settled it against his wrist, holding Sherlock’s hand in place.

“This? This is yours now. It has been for a long time. Asking that you be allowed to keep track of it, to know where it is, is never asking too much. I know all the blood and concert tickets and childhood photos and board games will never make up for what I put you through. I swear, Sherlock, I swear on this heart, I will never do that to you again.”

He leaned up and sealed his promise with a gentle, questioning kiss, and almost went lightheaded at the forgiveness he finally felt there. Desire stirred in his gut, and after a long moment, he breathed a few words into Sherlock’s mouth.

“Can I take you to bed, please?” Another kiss. “ _Our_ …” kiss… “bed?” He pulled away and looked up, his eyes dark with need.

Sherlock’s eyes had fallen closed, and his hand still rested on John’s chest. “Hmm,” he frowned, then opened his eyes, narrowing them at John. “Actually, I think I fancy a game of Monopoly first.”

John’s face cracked into a wide smile. “You bastard.” He lifted Sherlock’s hand from his chest, kissed its palm, and pulled him toward the bedroom.


End file.
